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Eloise was crying in the way she had cried since she was very small, almost soundlessly, only her shoulders moving.

He started forward.

Juliet stepped in front of him. Her hand came to his chest, flat against his sternum; she looked at him, and she shook her head once, very slightly.

Adam stopped.

He watched her cross the stable alone, watched her lower herself down into the straw beside his daughter without pausing to consider it, without looking at her dress, without hesitation of any kind.

Eloise looked up and then turned into her immediately, her head going to Juliet’s shoulder, her whole body leaning in. He took two strides towards them just as Juliet put her arm around her. “It’s all right, my darling. I’ve got you,” he caught the muffled words from Juliet’s lips.

Eloise’s shoulders moved. Then, slowly, they stilled.

The pony pressed its nose down toward them both. Juliet reached up with one hand and stroked its nose, still murmuring to Eloise. Eloise watched her, then, after a moment, reached up and did the same.

Adam stood in the doorway with his hands at his sides.

He had watched Eloise grieve alone and with him for six years. He had held her in the nursery, carried her from the garden, offered her the ponies as consolation… He’d told himself he was enough for her, that he was managing, that his presence was sufficient in the absence of everything else.

He was a good father. He had made it his whole purpose.

Until this moment, he had not watched anyone else give Eloise something he had not known how to give.

He stood there long enough to see Eloise’s lips move.

“I just wanted to see Sable.” Juliet nodded.

“I know, it’s all right.” He saw the tension leave his daughter’s frame entirely and stood long enough to feel it settle in him, quiet and unasked for.

Then he turned and walked back through the dark to the house, and he did not look back.

Chapter Eight

“Heels down!” Juliet called as she tightened her grip on the reins of her own horse and pulled it into a trot.

Eloise corrected immediately, her spine straightening in the saddle. Moonsong held her steady trot around the paddock, unbothered, and Eloise’s hands came up half an inch, as if trying to compensate for the imbalance, before she caught herself and brought them back down.

“Better,” Juliet said, her lips pulling into a small smile, as she brought her horse into pace beside young Eloise’s.

“I know,” Eloise said, which was entirely untrue, but Juliet appreciated the confidence.

She kept Mercury at an easy walk alongside the fence, letting Eloise set the pace. The morning was already warm, the south field glittering past the paddock gate, and Eloise’s braid had started to come undone on one side from the trot, a dark loop of hair swinging at her ear.

“Can we go faster?” Eloise asked after a while, her tone excited.

The child’s excitement was certainly contagious, but…

“Can we go faster…what?”

Eloise sighed deeply. “Can we go faster, please?”

Juliet pretended to think about it, which meant she actually was. She’d barely managed to get the duke’s approval for a simple horse-riding session with Eloise, and if she did anything to jeopardize his daughter’s safety, then this would be the first and last horse-riding session they’d ever get.

So she tried to find reasons not to grant that request. “Your hands still cross the centerline on the turns.”

“They do not.” Now Eloise was obstinate, her brows pulling down in that way that was so like the duke’s.

The duke who’d miraculously granted her request to let Eloise ride a horse simply because he’d been trying to avoid seeing her at all. Juliet scoffed under her breath. Well, she couldn’t say she’d been going out of her way to seek him out, either.